Week in Review November 28-December 2, 2016

Ok so maybe I should call these month in review instead of week in review.  I am having trouble finding the time or the motivation to update this blog this year.  As I said in my last post this has been our most challenging homeschool year to date.  It has very little to do with the curriculum and just a lot to do with life.

N. still likes the history in the guide.  He has enjoyed the storytime books and is reading those on his own.  He really enjoyed learning about Ben Franklin.  He just started reading "A Mount Vernon Love Story" and since George Washington fascinates him I think he will really enjoy reading it.  I am reading it at the same time.  He is doing fine with the various types of narrations.

In English he has been doing several of the short stories or excerpts.  These aren't his favorites mostly due to the fact he has to answer lots of questions and do vocabulary activities about the stories.  He is just a Charlotte Mason kind of guy I guess.  It is very good for him though to have to do these type of activities.  There are some deeper thinking type questions that are the only ones that don't have answers in the answer key.  I sure wish this wasn't the case, because it is obvious they are looking for a certain answer so why not put that in the key.  This is a minor inconvenience though since the answers to all the other questions are in the key. 

I can't say enough good things about In Their Sandals, the writing program used in this guide.  In this last story he finally found his groove and did a fantastic story from the perspective of the innkeeper where Mary and Joseph stopped.  The program guides him in creating additional characters and filling in some gaps that the bible doesn't mention, yet stays very true to the biblical story.  He really enjoyed writing the story and I enjoyed reading it. 

Chemistry is a tough course.  He is doing ok with it, but I am having to teach it some.  I doubt there are many high school students that can do Chemistry completely on their own with out some real life teaching though.  The labs have all worked out and gone very well. 

One major change we made that has been a very positive change is that we dropped TT Precalculus and switched to one of Carrie's recommendations.  He is doing mathhelp.com College Algebra.  He really enjoys it and I like that it is over some things he has already learned in Algebra 2 but presents them in a different way and in some cases goes more in depth.  The problems start easy and build up in challenge and I like that also.  He will need to take the Accuplacer test for the Community College and I think this will be a great way to prepare for that.

In Spanish he has moved on to Visual Link Spanish 2-Verbs.  He continues to like Visual Link.  I am still hoping to complete Spanish 2 this school year or at least over the summer. 

Week in review for week of Oct. 10-14, 2016

We just finished week 8 of the US History 1 guide.  He has been getting up very early in order to get his school work done in time to go to work.  I am very impressed with his motivation and work ethic.  I try to always be honest about our year here and I will admit there are parts of this year that have been frustrating for both of us.  I don't think it is necessarily a curriculum issue, I think it has to do with the heavy duty subjects he has as well as just the fact he has other things going on in his world other than just school.  First let me get the things that have been struggles out of the way so I can end up on a high note.

The biggest struggle remains Constitutional Literacy.  I think this is mostly due to his frustration with the Probe paragraphs.  I have ended up guiding him way more than I want to with these, but I guess that is what teachers do.  The information truly is valuable, but sometimes it is frustrating that he is supposed to watch the video and answer the questions as he goes and he watches the video and the answers aren't in the video, they are instead in the reading he had done the day before.  Not a huge deal, but just an aggravation.  He is getting better each week at figuring out what to listen for and now knows if he doesn't hear the answer to look back in the book.  He is very sensitive to how information is presented and for some reason he doesn't care for Michael Farris's style.  He told me of all the courses he has ever done in our years of homeschooling this is his least favorite.  I actually thought about quitting it and even gave him the option of doing that.  His answer was "no mom I don't want to do that, just because I don't like it and it is hard isn't reason to quit it.  I'm not going to like every subject."  Ha well I guess he told me!  Of course his words sound pretty familar-lol, I'm pretty sure he might have heard those from somewhere.

Chemistry is a hard course, and can be a challenge due to the fact that I am relearning it as I go.  However he is understanding things better each week and taking on more of the learning himself with me not having to do quite as much teaching.  The experiments have been great.

Pre-Calculus is another challenge, again not because of the curriculum, but just the nature of Pre-Calculus.  Again I am learning along with him and I'm not sure how ready my old brain is for this subject.  He has had to teach me a few times.

Now on to the positives.  He really likes the history this year!  He laughed when one of his assignments was a typed narration.  He has done those since he was 11.  He did a much better job on his second highlighted narration this year.  He also finished his table of the formation of each colony.  It is tough to make it look nice when you are having to cut and paste each sentence.

 

He really likes the mapping activities that go along with the history also.  I do end up having to label some things for him as he points them out.  He just can't write that small.

Another positive is the literature.  He is now reading The Scarlet Letter along with a Christian guide to the book.  The Christian guide makes all the difference in his understanding and enjoyment of the book.  Today he shared with me some really good insight he had about the character of Pearl and what she represents. 

The Living Library is another positive.  He just finished a book on George Whitfield which he found interesting and now will go back and finish Ben Franklin's Almanac which he loves.  I am not making him do the follow up activities for these books, but we do discuss things verbally.

He also continues to really like reading through the New Testament for his bible study and he and his Dad have had interesting discussions about Everyday Battles. 

So as you can see despite some struggles there is still lots to enjoy and as he so wisely has told me, each year always has some things that are harder than others.

 

Week in review Sept. 26-30, 2016

Once again I am falling behind in blogging.  I think part of that is as he gets older there just isn't as much stuff to take pictures of.  We just finished week 6 in the US History 1 guide.  He has hit his groove in most subjects and is doing around 5-5 1/2 hours of work most days, not including a lunch break. 

He really likes the history this year.  He finds all the books interesting and he likes the American Testimony DVD's.  The narrator sounds a bit like a computer generated voice, but the information in them is very interesting.  He has been doing talking points each week and it is interesting to me to see what he picks out to talk about. 

I like the different types of narrations that he is doing this year.  N. has found them somewhat challenging at times just because they are different, but he did a really nice job with his opinion one this last week.

He likes the New Testament Survey and Everyday Battles.  One morning it was so nice out he did his bible study outside.  Since the company was so nice to send us a pdf file of the bible study book he does it on the computer just like he did last year.

He is doing better with Chemistry I think.  He seems to understand things when he does the comprehension questions and the review questions although I do have to help him some.  I am using the tests more as spiral review questions when he is working on the next chapter. He loves the experiments and so far every one of them has worked.  The flame test was especially cool when he looked that the color flame given off by different chemicals.  He doesn't love writing up formal lab reports so that is a learning curve for this year.

Constitutional Literacy is probably the subject he struggles the most with, or maybe it is me who struggles with it.  The subject matter is interesting and I think it is crucial material for him to learn, but I just think it can be difficult to perform some of the assignments. .  He finds the DVD's a little dry and sometimes hard to follow.  The biggest challenges are the probe paragraph questions at the end of each chapter.  It can be very difficult to find the information they are asked to research.  Sometimes it takes sorting through webpage after webpage to find anything that even remotely relates or comes from a more Christian perspective.  I wish there was more guidance in a teachers guide that gave some websites to use, or a general idea of the answer.  I will admit that sometimes I have him do it orally or if he struggles, I tell him to just do the best he can and move on. 

 

In Math he finished Algebra 2 last week and this week started Teaching Textbooks new Pre-Calculus 2.0.  So far it has been review, which is kind of nice after the end lessons of Algebra 2 which were pretty challenging.  Math continues to be a strength of his.

He finished The Robe in English and is now reading The Prince and The Pauper.  He really likes the Prince and the Pauper so far.  He finished his first story for In Their Sandals and I had to help him some with knowing how to start a story like that, but it turned out to be a good story.  Now he is working on his second one where he is a sheep merchant in the temple during Passover when Jesus overturns the tables.  

One new thing that has thrown a bit of a glitch in our smooth schedule is that he got a job and is working some afternoon's so he has to get his school done by a certain time.  He wasn't sure he would like working, but so far so good. 

Week in review August 29-September 2, 2016

I am calling this a week in review when in reality it is a summer/first 2 weeks of school review.  The summer was wonderful and went by way too fast.  A few  highlights of summer were a fantastic vacation, getting his driver's license, going to a local park where he could do parkour, and training with a few of the top American Ninja Warriors up in Michigan at an Adult Parkour camp and American Ninja Warrior camp.

 Elet Hall

Jamie Rahn

Flipping over his sister at a local park!

But of course summer had to come to an end so now we just finished week 2 of the AH1 high school guide.  I want to say up front to those that have followed my blog through the years that I may not share quite as much on here about struggles etc as I have in the past out of respect for the man that he is becoming. Here is how he wanted his first day of school picture to look.

It is taking both of us a little while to get into the groove of the new guide, but we are slowly getting there.  His favorite subject so far is history.  He is very interested in this time period partially because he loves listening to the music from the musical Hamilton.  On a side note I did buy the edited version of this CD, but  will give a heads up that it isn't very edited.  Only certain words were edited out, not others or subject matter.  Since he is 17 and he skips a few of the more questionable songs I have chosen to let him listen to this but I realize many people would not feel the same way.  Anyway because of his interest in all thing Hamilton and that time period he is really enjoying history.  He had his first highlighted narration and did very well.  He also had a key word narration.  You can partially see his writing for his notecards for his oral narrations.  I decided not to make him type these and just let him write the way he usually writes if he is just taking notes.

Chemistry is a subject I am doing along with him.  He is a spiral learner and there isn't quite enough review so I am figuring out how to incorporate the extra problems and some of the videos that are located on the website that is in the front of the book.  What I may do for now is use the test problems as a spiral review problems and spread them out a few problems at a time that he works each day as we go through the next chapter.  This is similar to what Teaching Textbooks does with math so I think it might work. 

 

He is finishing up Visual Link Spanish 1 and Teaching Textbooks Algrebra 2.  With only doing things 4 days a week we tend to not finish math in a typical school year.  He will move into Visual Link Spanish 2 and Teaching Textbooks Pre-calculus when he is done.

Bible is very similar to last year so it feels like an old friend which is very nice when he is getting used to a new guide.  He is doing the devotional with his Dad and they meet on Saturday mornings to discuss it. I love hearing him sing the hymns that are part of the bible box.  Just makes for a great start of the day.

His is doing Constitutional Literacy with just the "What Ever Happened to Justice" component from the Government box as his government.  I have also added a few videos to cover the topics that I felt he needed to fill in to make a complete government course.

His also doing the literature and composition components from the guide and is getting the hang of both. He is doing Easy Grammar for grammar.  He is reading the Robe and I think he is getting to the point where he is enjoying it more.  We may try and watch some of the movie just to pique his interest more.  In Their Sandals has him excited about writing, but it is different from the very guided scholarly writing of Mr Stevens and EIW so he is still figuring out what is expected with this. 

I have tweaked a few more things than usual this year, but I think that is pretty typical for high school.  Each child takes a slightly different high school path, especially the last 2 years and we as parents can adjust as needed.  HOD is an amazing curriculum and I feel like she makes it very easy to adjust things by saying things like "use this scheduled math, grammar and Spanish or use your own."  We are choosing to use our own for those things this year, just based on what fits him best.

Week in Review 5/2-5/6, 2016

It has been awhile since I blogged.  Life has been very busy and we have just been in the homestretch of school and things have been going well.

In English N. finished up Les Miserables.  I was a little surprised when he told me that he really enjoyed this book.  He usually is pretty indifferent about challenging lit books, but he ended up really liking several from this year.  He has started Animal Farm, but so far he doesn't care for it.  That is ok also.  I don't expect him to like everything he reads.  He was never interested in any of the utopian type literature.  It just isn't his thing.  I still think it is good for him to read and we discuss the symbolism and then he moves on.  He asked me if next year the lit plans are done the same way and when I told him yes he was very happy to hear that.  In Composition he is finishing up his research paper on personal trainers. 

In Health he did a project where he drew fire escape plans for each room of our house.  He is very good at anything that requires visual perceptual skills and he really enjoyed this project.

In History he has covered WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam war.  It has been more of a survey of each of these, but he covered them in more detail in MTMM and the things he covered this time were more mature subject matter.  We listened to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and it was very moving.  He really was challenged with the Critical Thinking and Reading questions in this guide.  I think they pushed him to think out of the box.

In Art he had a few Mr. Stebbing videos these past few weeks and those always make him happy.  He has enjoyed this course and has asked to go to the Art Museum soon, because he wants to see paintings by some of the artist he studied.  That to me is a successful art history class.

In Science he is finished the study of genetics, which I thought was well done and he moved on to the environment and environmental science. His dad is an environmental engineer so N. already knows some of the information being taught.   He hasn't loved filling out all the fill in the blanks, but what I have noticed is that it really helps his retention.  There have been many studies about actually writing down notes and information and how it helps your brain over just typing or discussing it and I definitely see this to be the case for him.

Overall this has been a good solid year.  He has been challenged in some areas and others have come fairly easily which is what I would expect. 

In news outside of HOD he had a big dream come true.  He was able to go and watch a taping of American Ninja Warrior and while there he met 2 of his favorites from the Ninja World and saw many others.  Here he is with Sam Sann and Daniel Gil(who we later found out is a homeschool graduate).

He also went to a new parkour gym and was able to try many new things for some new heights. 

Week in review 3/14-3/18/2016

     The past few weeks have gone very well.  We just finished up week 28 in the WH guide and are getting ready to take a spring break, so I thought I would update the blog.

     In history N. has been immersed in the French Revolution and the time following it when Napoleon was in and out of power.  I love the coverage of this time period in the guide.  I feel like I truly understand it now.  It is covered in literature in The Scarlet Pimpernel and then also in The Count of Monte Cristo.  In the living library we read The Patriot's Daughter which also included this time period and then of course the coverage in the history box, including Critical Thinking with Primary Resources as well as The You Are There episodes.  I think my son and I both finally understand all that went on during this period.  The Critical Thinking questions still remain one of the toughest assignments for him and I am still having to give him some guidance. His answers aren't where I want them to be yet as far as complexity.  I worried about his until I saw he will do similar assignments next year, so I think it is fine to look at this as a training year for this type of assignment.  He is doing better with the You Are There assignments in his ability to pick out crucial information as he listens.  I am hoping this will help him with note taking during lectures.  He also is doing well taking notes to then give an oral topic narration. 

He is doing well with his written narrations and can easily write at least 300-400 words. 

     His art notebook is coming along and I feel like this study has given him a great overview of all the artists.

    In Biology he continues learning about the human body.  As a Physical Therapist I am picky about the coverage of this topic and I feel like it does a good job with this.  He doesn't love filling out all the questions each day, but he does retain a lot of what he reads due to the act of writing down the answers.  I would never have him do all ACE, but for one subject it works well.  He said he finds the reading interesting and has loved some of the video labs.

    He continues to move along with TT Algebra 2.  Some days we only do 1/2 a lesson, but since I like him to do math during the summer anyway, it shouldn't be a problem. He continues to do well with Visual Link Spanish and is doing this at his own pace.  If he needs to repeat an activity he does.  Again I want him to do some Spanish during the summer so he won't lose what he has learned so this works out fine.

     In literature he is now reading Les Miserables.  I modified things just a little bit.  I am having him do 2 of the lit journal assignments a week as instructed in the guide and then the other ones he is presenting to me orally.  I also am having him do his written lit narrations for this book orally.  He has to prepare for it with notes and address the question and include any quotes just as instructed in the guide, he just does it orally.  This is mainly just a time saving technique.  He can take so long to read and type and with this book he is also listening to the radio drama each day, which we both love.  I just didn't want him to not like the book because this box was taking too long for him to do.  This is an example of something I tweaked a little bit due to his challenges, but try to not interfere with the intent of the assignments.  

     In closing just a fun picture of what he does in his free time when he finishes his school day.

Week in Review week of 2/15/2016

     As typical this time of year I really slack off on blogging.  Part of that is I lose motivation and part of it is that school is just going along and there isn't a lot of new things to blog about.  We just finished week 24 in the World History Guide. 
    I will cover just a few of the highlights.  N. continues along pretty well with most everything.  I have made one change in the past 2 weeks and that is we have stopped Rod and Staff Grammar.  This was a really hard decision for me to make because I feel like it is an excellent grammar program, however I was seeing that he still didn't have his prepositions down and couldn't isolate prepositional phrases which then got in the way of him figuring out the other sentence parts.  Also Rod and Staff instructions are wordy and no matter how we approached it he would start to zone out and get confused.  He and I are very similar in this aspect.  So for now we have switched to Easy Grammar Plus and we are hitting prepositions hard.  I'm not sure what I will do next year.
     In EIW he finished his persuasive essay back in January.  He was struggling with the given prompts so I challenged him to come up with his own and he decided to persuade drivers to not use their phones while driving.  Since he has his driving temps this was a very timely topic and one I gladly let him cover. 

     He then did a process analysis essay and again the prompts weren't things he had much knowledge of so I let him write a process analysis essay about how to do one of his parkour vaults.  As expected this was one of his best papers yet because he knew the subject so well.  I figure in public school they are often given a broad prompt and allowed to pick a more specific topic so that is what I did.  At this point it is more important that he write a good essay.

     In Science he has now been doing the Human Anatomy Paces.  As a Physical Therapist I can say that these are very well done.  I had ordered a few additional slides that go along with these Paces because he may go into Exercise Science in college so I wanted him to see the actual slides.  He loved looking at the slide of the 3 different muscle types.

     His World Histoy notebook is really coming along.  I have let him dictate to me a little more this year, mostly due to the nature of the assignments.  He continues to take short notes during You Are There on notebook paper and then I transfer those notes over to his notebook.  He will verbally add a few details to those notes as I copy them.  He is doing better with his written narrations.  The Critical Thinking using Primary Source Documents continues to be a very challenging assignment for him.  I am still having to come along side him quite a bit for this activity.  I'm not sure if that is typical or if most students can do these without input from their parent. 

 The Living Library continues to be a big hit this year.  I don't think there has been one book that he hasn't liked.  In Literature he is reading The Count of Monte Cristo.  He had a little trouble understanding this book at first, but he seems to follow it pretty well now and I was very pleased with his last written narration that went along with the literature. 

    I feel like he continues to slowly improve on skills he will need for college or whatever the future holds for him.  School doesn't come easy for him and his memory issues can cause some frustrations for both of us, but what I do see him learning is perseverance and giving everything your best effort even if it isn't your favorite subject. 

Week in Review 1/11-1/15,2016

We finished another week of the WH guide.  N. had one day where he struggled just overall in all subjects.  I know he was tired that day and because of his CP this seems to affect him more than it would most kids his age. 

He finished up a project in Total Health this week. It was a mental health project and he chose one that was at the end of the chapter on self image.  He chose to memorize 3 bible verses that related to helping him keep a self image that is centered around who he is in God and qualities that God desires to build up in him.  He picked pretty short verses, but I was ok with that. Since he is not neurotypical, he has battled some self esteem issues. The verses he picked are verses that are very applicable to his life.  He then recited them for me. Here is a picture of him right after he told them to me.  You will note all the exercise equipment and vault in the picture-yes my living room is his gym during the winter months.

He continues with his Art History and each week he has to answer short answer questions as well as do a "writing project", which is really just a paragraph in answer to a question.  This week he was asking "why he had to write in art?".  After we discussed the negative attitude I told him because writing wasn't just for history or English, that he will be asked to write in all subjects in college.  I do like how this year he does have writing assignments in almost all subjects.  It is very good practice for future assignments.  The short answer questions can actually be very challenging.  They often require some thought.  Some of them are written in a way that requires some inference.  He has always struggled with that, but I see some improvements this year.

In history he had to read several primary source documents about the peasant revolt that occurred during the time of Martin Luther and he had to decide if Martin Luther was guilty of inciting the peasants to revolt and then ordering them to be killed.  He also had specific questions to answer about the reading and he has to go back and highlight things in the text that support his verdict.  When he and I discussed what he was going to say for his verdict he gave such a good answer, but then when he put it on paper it was very simplified.  That happens often and it is frustrating.  I did not make him fix it because I use things as a baseline to be able to see if he is showing improvement in an area.

In Math he continues to do very well with TT Algebra 2 and I see some pretty deep thinking going on as he figures out how to solve the problems. 

In literature he continues to read The Scarlet Pimpernel and says he enjoys it.  We started watching the 1982 movie and while it is a good movie, it is very different from the book.

Week in Review 1/4-1/8/2016

This was our first week back after break and I think N. handled it better than I did.  He hit the ground running and actually jumped back in pretty well.  We finished week 18 of the World History guide. 

In history he finished up learning about Joan of Arc from a few different sources.  He learned about various aspects of the Middle Ages and since he has such a good foundation in this time period due to RTR he was able to build on that core knowledge and think about things from a deeper perspective.  He had 2 You Are There assignments this week. One was on the burning of Joan of Arc and another was on the Trial of Savonarola.  These are one of the hardest assignments in the guide for him.  He listens to the audio and takes notes about each person in the event.  He is to list things they did, words they said, and decisions they made.  If I think there is something key that he is missing I will pause it and wait to see if he comes up with it.  One thing I am learning is that he is a slower processor than some so I need to give him time to process what he has heard.  Often if I do that he will come up with some insight or good answers, but if I jump in or seem in a hurry he will just tell me the first thing that comes to his mind and often that is more superficial.  The most challenging part is forming his opinion at the end.  Sometimes it is hard to figure out what we are supposed to form an opinion on.  I'm not sure we always figure that out correctly.  What I focus on though is as he gives his opinion I want him to focus on backing up what his opinion is and he needs to use details from the audio.  This is a learning process. 

He continues to make entries in his Book of Centuries.  This is a useful tool to keep track of what all was going on in a certain point in history.

One assignment he has in history each week is talking points about his reading.  It is always interesting to see what he finds interesting or significant.  It is often not what I would have picked out, but he tells me why he found it interesting and that gives me insight in to what he values and how he thinks. 

In Bible he finished up memorizing the 10 commandments.  He found a video with hand gestures that helped him with this so here he is showing do not steal.

In Fine Arts he studied Coubet.  He had to write answers to 2 of the questions in his Art notebook.  The questions this week were easier and required less writing than usual.  He is getting better about pulling out the essential information from the readings.  I always label the paintings for him.  He criticized Coubet's imagination in naming his paintings as he read out loud to me the title "Self portrait with a black dog". 

In Literature he is reading The Scarlet Pimpernel.  I absolutely love this book and I am willingly reading it again as he reads it.  I love the written narrations that go along with the lit this year.  I love that they guide him in to thinking about things that he probably wouldn't have thought about such as why Percy and Marguerite got married.  He usually finds the literature narrations easier and I think this is because he is so relational and therefore he relates to the characters.  I never would be able to come up with these things on my own so I am thankful for all the guidance Carrie gives in the guide.

I asked him again this week how he likes this guide and he said he enjoys it.  There are parts he likes more than others, but overall he finds it very interesting.  I asked him if he feels like it is too much work and he said no not really.  Science is the only subject where he might complain about the number of questions, but I know that is due to how hard it is for him to write all the answers.  If I sense he is getting weary I will come along at the end of his lesson and scribe for him.  Overall this guide continues to impress me and I feel like it is an appropriate amount of work for a high schooler.  We don't have big lengthy discussions, but he would hate it if we did.  He will initiate discussions about the lit even on days that aren't discussion days.  I know if I tried to force these discussions I would not get could information and I would probably kill his love for learning.  Since he is a slower processor letting him process and discuss as he feels led works much better.  We also have good discussions at other times other than school that come directly from his bible study or other things he has done in school.